Dear Grand Oak Families,

I hope everyone enjoyed a short week! I am looking forward to a full week next week to begin to build our student stamina! Our next break will be an“Early Release” day on October 18th. We will have 4 of these days throughout the year. On early release days students will go home at 12:00 and teachers will have additional professional development. More info about this process will come home next week.

This past weekwe also hadour curriculum night for parents. This was a time that we could talk about how your students will be learning in the classroom. We hope that you enjoyed the changes we madeover the past 3 years to make it more engaging and beneficial for parents. We will also have our first Coffee Chat on September 28th at 8:05 in the Tree House. This will be a time to learn more about the school and ask any questions you may have. We hope to see you at this event! We want to make sure that our families have access to our message from many different mediums (check us out on Twitter (@grand_oak) and Facebook). We are now at 1000+ followers on Facebook, which is awesome!My hope is that we will have a great crowd for these events and it will continue to affirm my beliefs that we have a wonderful parent population, and how very lucky we are to have the constant support and involvement that our parents have shown toward the staff already this year.

As we move through our first full month of school I wanted to take a few moments to talk about how we will handle safety at Grand Oak. Here is some key information about our plan:

  • At 8 AM, all exterior doors will be locked and you will have to be “buzzed in” to enter. Once our bell rings parents must walk student in to the school and sign them in as tardy.
  • All visitors must check in at the office each and every time they visit-no exceptions. We will not allow anyone to take a child from school that is not on their blue information card found in the main office. We also will ask for ID for parents that we do not know, so please be patient.
  • During the office sign-in process all visitors input their license and will be scanned for child predator lists and CMS banned individual lists.
  • Our check-in system will issue a visitor badge to all visitors. If a parent doesn’t have a badge they will be escorted back to the office to sign in.
  • All students will have picture ID’s that they will wear at all times at Grand Oak. They will receive these soon.
  • We have cameras both inside and outside the school and we are able to monitor and keep track of all activities.
  • We also teach our students special expectations regarding how to react to a “lockdown” and “fire drill” situations. We will also have practice events and audits by our school system security department to make sure we understand processes, move quickly and are calm during these events. Our goal will be to never scare our children during these practice events.

Though this is not a comprehensive list, my hope is that you will see how serious we take the safety of our children every day.

I hope all of our families have a wonderful weekend and challenge your children to “fill a bucket”!

Mr. Giovanelli

Volunteering at Grand Oak

We hope that all of our parents are interested in volunteering at Grand Oak this year and in to the future. If you do plan to go on field trips with your children or help out in the classroom please visit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools website ( and click on the “Volunteering in CMS” link on the right side of the home page. Go to the bottom of the following page and click on “Register to Volunteer”. At that point just follow the steps and you will be able to join us in the classrooms and on our upcoming field trips. Even if you are not sure if you will be able to volunteer please go ahead and complete the information so it will be done. We thank all of our parents for going through this safety process.